


Mixtapes & Mixed Messages

by GatesKeeper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Childhood Friends, Christmas, Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 06:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28320111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GatesKeeper/pseuds/GatesKeeper
Summary: “You’re not…nervous, right?" Sam spoke up, as he eyed his brother's increasingly frustrated attempts to fix up the guest room. "I mean, I know it’s been a while since you and Cas have seen each other in person—”Dean snorted.‘A while.’ Try three and a half years.“—but you still video chat all the time—”Once a week.“And you guys have been best friends since you were fifteen. Doubt Cas is looking to be impressed.”“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just in the holiday spirit. And you’re in the Scrooge-You spirit, apparently,” Dean grumbled, walking past his brother and into the kitchen.Sam put his hands up in surrender. “Fine, fine. If you want to pretend this is all perfectly normal, I won’t say anything else—”Of course, that’s when the tabletop Christmas tree—which Dean had put up again this year—tipped over, scattering keychains across the floor.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 44
Kudos: 334
Collections: Destiel Writers & Readers





	Mixtapes & Mixed Messages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stitchingirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingirl/gifts).



December 23, 2020

“Something you feel like telling me, Dean?” Sam asked, leaning against the doorway to what was formally his room—now the ‘guest room’ of Dean’s apartment.

“Not really,” Dean responded, stripping the bed of its old sheets and replacing them with the higher-thread count ones he’d bought at _Bed, Bath & Beyond_ last week, along with a couple of memory foam pillows, some towels, and a new toilet seat—because fuck trying to get the old one clean.

“So—you’ve just been possessed by the spirit of Martha Stewart for no reason?”

Dean looked up from where he was wrestling a midnight blue fitted sheet into submission. “I thought that fancy pants college of yours was supposed to be making you smarter. It’s countdown to Christmas time, Sammy.”

“I get that. What I _don’t_ understand is why, last year, getting ready for Christmas meant buying extra six-packs of beer and throwing a few discount garlands up—”

“Hey, we had a tree.”

“Yeah, a _tabletop_ one,” Sam argued, arms crossed over his chest. “That you decorated with _keychains_ you picked up on _road trips_. It kept falling over every two minutes.”

“What? That wasn’t good enough for you?”

“It was. That’s my _point._ This year, you’ve got a six-footer in the living room and the fridge is stuffed full—with things like _organic cider_ and _lavender honey_. Is this seriously all because Cas is coming to visit?”

Dean growled as he finally got one corner of the fitted sheet placed only for the opposite corner to pop off. “How about a little less interrogation and a little more help?” he admonished his brother.

At least, Sam had the decency to look guilty. Together, they were able to get the sheet laid out nice and smooth in about a minute.

“You’re not…nervous, right? I mean, I know it’s been a while since you and Cas have seen each other in person—”

Dean snorted. _‘A while.’ Try three and a half years._

“—but you still video chat all the time—”

_Once a week._

“And you guys have been best friends since you were fifteen. Doubt Cas is looking to be impressed.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just in the holiday spirit. And you’re in the Scrooge-You spirit, apparently,” Dean grumbled, walking past his brother and into the kitchen.

Sam put his hands up in surrender. “Fine, fine. If you want to pretend this is all perfectly normal, I won’t say anything else—”

Of course, _that’s_ when the tabletop Christmas tree—which Dean had put up again this year—tipped over, scattering keychains across the floor.

_December 23, Four years ago…_

_The sound of the doorbell sent a jolt of electricity through Dean’s veins, as he quickly scrabbled for the jacket that he’d thrown over his desk chair and took the stairs two at a time._

_“Castiel,” he heard his mother greet the new arrival. “This is a nice surprise. Did Dean—”_

_“Hey Mom, Cas and I were just going for a drive,” he interrupted, slightly more out of breath than he had any right to be._

_“Okaaay,” she stated, with suspiciously raised eyebrows, which mirrored Cas’s. “And when you get back, will Castiel be joining us for dinner?”_

_“Uh, maybe,” he answered for his friend, who only looked more bewildered._

_He slid around her and pushed Cas back onto the porch. “I’ll text you,” he promised over his shoulder to Mary, as he ushered Cas towards Baby._

_For a minute, he thought about opening Cas’s door for him—but he could make out the flutter of the living room curtain in his peripheral vision. His mom was going to be full of questions when he got back; there was no need to give her more ammo._

_Slipping into the Impala, at least, did something to ease his nerves. The grip of the steering wheel was better than a stress ball and the leather and motor oil scent wrapped around him comfortingly._

_He smiled when he saw that the car had a similar effect on Cas, too. His posture relaxed—and he seemed content to wait for Dean to volunteer whatever was on his mind._

_Soon enough, they were driving past cornfields—the sky rapidly going from golden to orange to dusky pink._

_“So, uh, I got you a little something—for Christmas,” Dean broke the silence at last, keeping his gaze steadily on the road. Somehow, he could still see Cas’s expression, though—a mix between confusion and bemusement._

_“As did I.”_

_“Yes, but mine’s—uh…” He could do this. It was like popping his shoulder back into place after it got messed up at football practice. He just—shouldn’t give himself time to think about it. “Check the glove box?” It came out as more of a question than he intended it to._

_Cas’s long fingers easily worked the latch before he pulled out a box creatively wrapped in aluminum foil since Dean hadn’t wanted to ask his mom where the real stuff was._

_“Should I…?”_

_“I mean, yeah, it’s for you,” Dean said uncertainly, unconsciously drumming against the steering wheel._

_Cas nodded, and began to peel the foil back slowly, deliberately—pretty much the exact opposite of how Dean tended to open gifts. Just one of an endless number of reasons why it made no sense that they were friends._

_In fact, when Dean had rolled into Pontiac High at 15 in an oversized leather jacket, he planned on not making any friends at all. He was sure that he’d only be there ten months, a year tops—no matter that his mom promised that her work wasn’t going to transfer her anymore. And so, he stared down anyone who tried approaching him in the cafeteria, flirted shamelessly with the teachers until they got too flustered to deal with him, and picked a fight with one of the school’s most notorious bullies in his second week. The last one kinda backfired as a few kids started calling him a vigilante behind his back._

_Castiel, meanwhile, was the eighth child of a very Christian family—quiet and intense. He wasn’t rude exactly, but he tended to look away when people talked to him, as if they weren’t quite interesting enough to hold his attention. At first, teachers tried to call him out for staring out the window during class—until he proved he could recite everything they’d been saying for the last five minutes word for word, and usually corrected something about their lesson in the process._

_The day Castiel chose to sit down at Dean’s otherwise-empty table during lunch, a charge went through the whole room—everyone wondering what would happen when an unstoppable force met an unmovable object. Dean stared at Cas—and, surprisingly, Cas stared right back, as if he finally found a puzzle worth solving._

_Eventually, Dean grunted an agreement, Cas set his tray down, and the rest was history._

_It didn’t matter that they never had any of the same classes, or that Dean, having lost some of the chip on his shoulder, eventually became the star quarterback of the school football team. It didn’t matter that Dean couldn’t finish a single conversation without making three pop culture references and two innuendos, all of which completely went over Cas’s head. They were, inexplicably, a unit that nothing and no one could come between._

_Cas’s voice jolted him back to the present._

_"It’s a mixtape,” Cas murmured when he finally got the box open, tracing Dean’s familiar handwriting absently._

_“Yeah, uh,” Dean cleared his throat. “Did I ever tell you about how my parents got together?” He raced on before giving the other boy a chance to answer. “They were friends first, you know? Family friends—going way back—but then they ended up working a summer job together, and they just clicked._

_“Only, they never—well, as my mom put it, Dad was too chickenshit to ask her out, so they were just, uh, in this limbo—” Dean pulled at the collar of his shirt, wondering how it could be this hot in December with the sun almost completely down now._

_“Dean? Dean?” Cas called, seeming farther away than two feet. “Why don’t we pull over?”_

_He didn’t particularly feel like crashing Baby, so he listened, navigating them onto the shoulder._

_As soon as the car was stopped, Cas pulled Dean’s hands from the steering wheel, prompting Dean to look at him for the first time in half an hour. And seriously, he saw Cas’s eyes every day—how could he still get blown away by how blue they were?_

_“Now, finish the story,” Cas said, and Dean almost thought he heard a waver in the words._

_“She, uh—” he tried again, but his throat closed up. What was he doing? Cas was his best friend—the person who he spent most afternoons with, the one who somehow made him smile when he and Sam were fighting, and who, contrary to all common sense, was the one to convince him to ditch school to do random shit like visit the museums in Chicago or go swimming in one of the nearby lakes. Once, they paid a visit to a small town that was trying to beat the Guinness World Record for the largest house of playing cards just because Cas was fascinated by the “lengths of human persistence.”_

_And Dean was going to risk all of that for—_

_He tugged at his collar again, wondering if he’d managed to come down with a deathly illness in the last few minutes._

_All the dissenting voices in his head were silenced in an instant, though, when plush lips pressed against his._

_Because, suddenly, there was the up-close scent of Cas’s shampoo combined with the taste of something spicy—and the heat Dean had been feeling went in an entirely new direction._

_“Cas,” he tried to say, but it got lost as his mouth opened under the renewed pressure of Cas’s lips, his hands finally joining the program and tangling in strands of dark hair. This was way better than kissing Bela Talbot under the bleachers or scoring the winning goal at the homecoming game or even that time that Cas had deliciously ended up in Dean’s lap when their friends decided to do a Taco Bell run and there weren’t enough spots in Cole’s car. It was exactly as amazing as he’d always known it would be if he ever got to have Cas for real and not just in his dreams._

_His lips moved from Cas’s lips to the corner of his mouth—down his jaw, up to his ear—and God, Cas made some of the best noises—his usual low grumble going breathless. And then, the world tilted as Cas scooted closer, pressing on Dean’s shoulder blades to lean him back across the bench seat when—_

_“Ow!” Dean gasped, breaking the seal of his mouth on Cas’s neck as his head cracked against the car door._

_Cas’s eyes went from lust-blown to concerned in a minute. “Are you okay? Did you hit it hard?” He moved Dean’s face by the chin so he could examine the area for himself._

_“Cas, it’s fine. I promise it’s not bleeding or anything.”_

_“Okay, that’s—that’s good,” Cas responded before slinking back to his side of the car with obvious bashfulness._

_He cleared his throat. “And the other thing…? Was that…? I mean, it seemed like something you were hinting at, but if I misunderstood or made you uncomfortable—”_

_Dean was able to shut him up with another kiss pretty quickly._

_/////_

_A long, long time later, he finally got around to telling Cas how his mom got fed up waiting for Dad to make a move, so she made him a mixtape of all her favorite songs—and told him that anyone who wanted to be her boyfriend better know all the lyrics by heart. They danced to #7 at their wedding._

_It was then that Cas pulled out a box of his own, which he’d had tucked in the pocket of his coat. “I feel less worried about giving this to you now,” he admitted—which piqued Dean’s curiosity a lot._

_He pulled off the lid. Tucked inside the tissue paper was a rock about half the size of a fist. “It’s a kind of quartz,” Cas explained as Dean looked at it closer. He couldn’t tell if it was blue with green veining or green with blue veining, but it was distinctly heart-shaped._

_“I’ve heard lots of sermons in my life about God’s love—and how fulfilled and safe are those who learn to accept it, embrace it, and love God in return. And I never could. I wondered if there was something broken in me—not just because I couldn’t find love for a faceless, unknowable, all-powerful entity, but also because—I look at my parents and my brothers and sisters and I don’t feel like I would go to the ends of the earth for them. I don’t feel like they are a necessary part of who I am._

_“But then you came into my life, and I—I understood that kind of love for the first time. And it’s so big and overwhelming I sometimes wonder how I contain it all inside me without exploding into light, but, somehow, I do. And, I suppose, it’s made me like myself more too—knowing that I, of all the people in the world, must have been made specially to love you.”_

_“Dude,” Dean admonished, focusing on the feel of the rock—heavy and smooth in his hands—so as not to give in to a watery smile. “Way to turn this into a chick flick moment.”_

_He laughed at Cas’s offended expression._

_“And, you know, ditto.”_

_Neither of them made it to dinner that night._

December 23, 2020

“Okay, you definitely can’t tell me this is normal you behavior,” Sam said, sitting with his arms crossed as he watched Dean pace around the living room.

“Hey, you’re always telling me to exercise. This is just me—getting my steps in,” Dean argued before a tingle shot up his spine.

“Cas is here!” he declared, going to sit on the couch by Sam and then realizing that he needed to open the door and springing back to his feet.

“What are you talking about? Nobody rang the—” Sam started, just as a loud buzz sounded.

Sam shook his head, amused. “Never mind then. I guess those Cas senses still work,” he muttered along with something else, but Dean stopped paying attention. Because Cas was in the hallway, Cas was stepping into his apartment, Cas was walking over and hugging Sam—and something that was missing inside Dean fell back into place.

_January 1 st, Almost four years ago…_

_Dean had his phone on speaker mode so that he could watch the countdown to midnight. 3… 2… 1_

_“Happy New Year, Cas,” he whisper-shouted, mindful of Sam asleep in the next room._

_“And you,” Cas responded with a smile that Dean could feel in his toes._

_It kinda sucked that they couldn’t be together for the whole cheesy kiss-at-midnight crap, but he was supposed to be babysitting Sam while his parents went out to a party—and it was too much of a risk to sneak Cas in. Not that he was keeping the change in their relationship a secret from his family, exactly. He just… wanted to figure some shit out first._

_First off, they were both seniors—and even though the other boy had applied to everything from state schools to the Ivys and hadn’t heard back from any of them yet, Dean knew that Cas was destined for some big-name college on the East Coast where everyone wore sweater vests and drove Priuses. It was just as obvious that Dean wasn’t._

_However, there was some hope he’d get into Rutgers, which was only an hour away from Princeton—or Southern Connecticut State, which was a stone’s throw from Yale. Not that he’d told Cas he’d applied to either of these places or the half a dozen others within driving distance of his boyfriend’s future prospects, but—that was the plan._

_He felt a little weird about leaving his brother, of course. But the genius was a year ahead in school and had tons of friends—so it’s not like Sam needed him to stay behind._

_As it turned out, those were famous last words._

_“Hold on, I’m getting another call,” Dean told Cas, mid-way through a conversation where Cas listed a scientific phobia and Dean tried to guess what it meant. The fact that there was actually a word for the fear of having peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth scared him more than the last three Friday the 13 th movies combined. “It’s probably Mom and Dad checking in. Give me 5.”_

_“No problem,” Cas reassured him, and it took Dean only half a second after they hung up to realize that it was the first time Cas hadn’t ended a phone call with “I love you” since their drive. Not that he needed to hear it all the time or anything._

_“Is this Dean Winchester?” a rough voice spoke on the other end of the line, jolting Dean from his thoughts._

_“Yeah. Who's asking?”_

_“My name is Officer Hammond.”_

_Cold dread seeped into Dean’s gut, the way that water slowly freezes into ice._

_“I’m sorry to tell you this, son, but—your parents have been in an accident….”_

_Dimly, he was aware of his phone clattering to the floor._

_/////_

_Life became a series of still images after that. Him staring down at his fisted hands as twin coffins were lowered into the ground. Bundles of flowers thrown immediately into the garbage can, ‘cause what the hell good were they going to do? Tupperware containers of casserole in the fridge that Dean and Sam ate, even as he cursed the stereotypical we-know-you’re-grieving food._

_In the fringes of all of them was Cas, but Dean couldn’t focus on that—him—right now. No, he had to find a job with the GED he barely managed to get in the weeks after he’d dropped out of high school. He had to find a way to get the world’s most-punchable Social Services workers to let him keep Sam even though he was days past his 18 th birthday. He had to sell the house they could no longer afford and find them someplace else to live. Anything else was irrelevant._

_Cas didn’t seem to agree. “Dean, you don’t have to do everything by yourself. If you would just talk to me, then I could help you.” He sounded so sure._

_Dean couldn’t stop himself; he laughed._

_“And how are you going to do that, Cas? You’ve got school and tutoring and your frickin’ etymology club—and about seven months until you blow out of this town for good. I get that you want to help, but you can’t—and I don’t need to worry about coddling your feelings when I’ve got things that actually matter to deal with. So, why don’t you do us both a favor and leave me the hell alone so I can fuckin’ think!”_

_He wanted to say he regretted the words as soon as he said them, but he didn’t. Partially because he hadn’t been able to feel anything since New Year’s and partially because it was clear now that his and Cas’s lives were destined to go down two very different paths. He might as well get used to being apart now._

_Except, of course, that Cas didn’t listen to him._

_He kept texting, kept emailing links that he thought would be helpful—including an application to a garage downtown. He came over to help Sam with his homework—which was more likely just an excuse to hang out, since Sam’s grades were as perfect as ever. And each time Dean managed to be ruder than the last, ignoring all the glares that Sam sent him._

_It was only on the day that Cas finally left for Harvard, after Dean had had dinner with Sam, fixed the leaking sink in the bathroom, did all the laundry, and made their lunches for the next day that he allowed himself to break down over what could have been._

December 23, 2020

Dean loved his little brother, but _goddamn,_ how had he never realized what a chatterbox he was? From the moment that Cas came inside, he was full of questions—about Cambridge, Cas’s friends, Cas’s knitting hobby, the movies he’d seen lately. He’s pretty sure he even brought up the damn weather.

Of course, he could have thought he was covering up for Dean—who felt even less capable of speaking than at that July 4th party he’d attended as a kid before his parents learned that he was allergic to strawberries. But could anyone really blame him?

Cas looked good.

Not that Dean didn’t already know that he’d grown up a lot in the last four years—but it had more of an impact in person, with his broadened shoulders, better-fitting clothes, and his before-noon five o’clock stubble. Not to mention his eyes were so much more intense in real life than on a computer screen.

For his part, it didn’t seem like Cas minded the ogling. In-between answering Sam, he watched Dean too—with the same fierceness he used to watch Dean out on the football field or at their Junior Prom, or—well, anytime actually.

“So,” Sam interrupted their staring contest, obviously feeling the tension but not understanding it. “I think Dean’s plan was to watch Christmas movies and pig out for the afternoon.”

Back in high school, he and Cas used to spend weekends in Dean’s room, watching Dean’s favorite movies on his laptop while trying whatever weird foreign snacks Cas had brought in his backpack that day.

“Yeah, I figured we’d start with _Die Hard_ ,” Dean announced, already prepared to argue with Sam if he dared say, _That’s not a Christmas movie, Dean._

Cas retrieved his suitcase from where he’d left it by the front door.

“I brought orange peel pocky, prawn and cocktail sauce-flavored potato chips, green tea Kit Kats, and elk jerky,” he announced once he’d unzipped it.

 _Yup,_ Dean thought with a dopey smile on his face. _Just like old times._

_December 25 th, Three years ago…_

_The first Christmas after their parents passed away was pretty much bound to suck, but Dean tried. He bought Sam some new clothes even if that was a lame present—but the kid was shooting up like a weed and he figured the girls at school were tired of seeing his damn ankles. Plus, he hoped the Amazon gift card would help make up for it._

_He’d also gotten pretty decent at cooking in the last year—even liked it—so he figured he could make a small ham without screwing it up._

_Of course, the thing that had Sam really thrilled about the holiday season was that they were dog-sitting for Sam’s classmate, Jess—and even if this would inevitably make Sam grumpy for two weeks once they had to give the dog back, for now, he was all smiles, wrestling with Bones over a rope toy._

_Dean wasn’t really expecting anything present-like himself, so the tribal amulet Sam had apparently found at a garage sale took him by surprise. He’d stopped wearing his rings and bracelets—working in a garage, they tended to cause more problems than they were worth—but this, he put on proudly, finding the weight comforting and almost familiar around his neck._

_Infinitely more surprising was the box from Cas he found in the mail._

_He hadn’t spoken to the other man in almost five months, though he thought that he and Sam still texted. He just—didn’t know what to say after how he’d treated him. Or maybe he did know but felt like he couldn’t—not with Sam still to take care of._

_He glanced at the piece of quartz that he kept on his bedside table—then slowly opened the box._

_It was another blue-green stone, this time with speckles of white and grey over it._

_Still shaped like a heart._

_/////_

_They started talking again. Mostly unimportant things. Dean asked about Cas’s classes and whether or not Cas had developed a Boston accent yet. Cas asked about his days at the shop and what he was planning on making for dinner that night._

_Slowly, they got back into the weird, almost philosophical questions that their old friendship had been made of—like speculating on which fictional dystopian future was more likely or arguing whether it was okay for Cyclops to marry a clone of Jean Grey after thinking that Jean Grey died._

_And then one night when Dean’s grief came crashing back in out of the blue, Dean had called Cas when he was already halfway deep into a bottle of whiskey._

_Somehow, he went from ranting about how unfair the world was to asking Cas to repeat various lines from Deadpool. And in-between hearing Cas’s completely neutral voice say, “If I ever decide to become a crime-fighting shit swizzler…” and “Time to make the chimi-fucking-changas!”, Dean realized that the pressure in his chest had lessened._

_/////_

_When next Christmas came around, he placed his newest blue-green piece of quartz next to the other two._

_The same with the following year’s._

December 24, 2020

Unsurprisingly, Dean didn’t sleep all that great. The three of them had stayed up until well past midnight watching movies—but his internal clock still told him to get up at the ass crack of dawn. He was also on the couch since he’d let Sam and his Gigantor limbs take his bed. But, to be honest, it was mostly just knowing that Cas was nearby with this unspoken thing between them that had his mind turning over like a familiar, well-held stone.

On days when he was rational, he knew what those rocks meant. But in the last four years, the two men had never brought up the week and a half when they’d been something more. And it crossed his mind—every time he found a hookup at a local bar and snuck home feeling slightly guilty afterward—that there wasn’t really anything stopping Cas from dating— _really_ dating—falling in love, and moving on with his life. Hell, anyone he met at Harvard would probably be a better match for him than Dean, who was still nothing more than a small-town mechanic and kinda okay with that.

And yet, he was selfish enough to hope that, maybe, Cas didn’t want anything better. Would be happy with going to sleep curled together and then fighting over the blankets at midnight, with ordering two different meals at restaurants and splitting them, with throwing a dart at a map and taking an impromptu road trip. Because that—Cas—was the only thing Dean had ever really wanted for himself.

Figuring that this was too much to worry about before coffee, he lumbered to his feet. And then, since he was already up, he decided to start on breakfast, using the way-too-expensive ingredients that Sam had made fun of him for.

A door creaked.

A second later, Cas appeared, blurry-eyed, with the best case of bedhead Dean had ever seen, and fucking hell, he couldn’t love this bee-loving, emoji-using, absolute dork of a human being more if he tried.

“Where should I put presents?” Cas asked—and only then did Dean notice the two boxes—two _long, flat_ boxes—Cas had tucked under his arm.

“Under the tree is fine,” he murmured, even as his stomach felt like it had been set to the spin cycle on a washing machine.

/////

“Okay, you’ve gone from acting strange to flat-out being a dick,” Sam complained later that afternoon when Cas had excused himself to the bathroom.

“Well, this is pretty much hell,” Dean said, gesturing to the three dozen pieces of gingerbread they were trying to fasten into a Millennium Falcon based on some kit Sam had seen and thought Dean would like. Instead, he had a burn on his hand from accidentally touching one of the baking trays without an oven mitt and was certain he would be finding icing in unmentionable places for days. “What’s the point of putting this fuckin’ thing together when you have to then take it apart to eat it?”

“It’s supposed to be festive, which you were all for yesterday,” Sam pointed out. “Besides, that’s not what I’m talking about. Every time Cas says something to you, you look like you’re gonna bite his head off.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“Try again.”

Dean scowled—two boxes covered in laughing reindeer wrapping paper mocking him from over in the corner. “I don’t know what to tell you, Sammy. We haven’t seen each other in a while. Maybe we just don’t get along the way we used to.”

Of course, that’s when his Cas senses went off, a second too late.

“Dean,” a low voice rumbled from behind him. _Shit._ “Can I talk to you in private for a moment?”

Swallowing hard in the face of blazing blue eyes, he nodded.

His feet automatically led them towards his bedroom so that he could at least change into something less sticky after Cas finished yelling at him. Of course, it didn’t take him long to realize his mistake, causing him to stop mid-step.

Cas, not expecting him to halt so abruptly, smacked into his back. “Dean—” he started in that magical way of his that was able to infuse the four letters of his name with about ten thousand different meanings.

And then, his gaze landed on the same place as Dean’s did. His nightstand. And the silence that settled over them seemed to say so much more.

“Are those…?” Cas asked after a minute, walking over to where four blue-green stones gleamed under the low light of a lamp but stopping short of actually touching them, as if he wasn’t sure he had permission. They were even shinier than when they’d been originally given—a result of Sam noticing his brother’s weird collection and buying him a rock polisher for his birthday.

“It’s not like you to ask questions you already know the answers to,” Dean grumbled for lack of anything else to say, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I don’t usually encounter people as confusing as you,” Cas retorted, turning to face him again—his expression looking war-torn.

“Just—be honest with me,” he said at last. “Do you really not enjoy my company anymore or are you deflecting for some reason? Because you’re sending me some mixed messages here.”

“ _I’m_ sending mixed messages?” Dean scoffed, knowing that this conversation was way overdue and yet still not ready for the way it made him feel like his guts were being scooped out with a melon-baller. “ _You’re_ the one who sends me heart-shaped quartz every Christmas—”

“That seems like a very consistent message to me.”

“Yeah? So what does it means when you stop?”

“I—” Cas opened his mouth, then closed it again, a furrow between his eyebrows.

“I mean, I get it if you’ve moved on or whatever. But couldn’t you have given me some warning sign when you agreed to come here—for Christmas—after four fuckin’ years, so that I didn’t—didn’t…” _Goddammit,_ Dean thought, slamming his fist back against the door.

Cas looked at him, full lips making a thin line, before he reached for the doorknob and stormed out.

“Wait, Cas!” Dean called, ignoring his brother who was watching him in concern. But the other man was already in the guest room, rummaging through his suitcase, probably planning on packing up and leaving and—

“Here,” Cas said, handing over—

A fist-sized box. Wrapped in aluminum foil.

Dean kinda wondered if he was seeing things. “But you—this morning—with the presents—” he said, unsure if it was his mouth or his brain that was malfunctioning more.

“Those are both for Sam. I couldn’t decide if he’d prefer the _Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Serial Killers_ or a shirt that said, ‘I flexed and the sleeves fell off’ so I got him both.”

Normally, he would have snorted, but making fun of Sammy was the last thing on his mind at the moment. “That’s, uh, yeah, good—good choices.”

“Dean?”

“Yes?”

“Open the box,” Cas said, somewhat exacerbated.

He tore off the foil. The stone was a little bigger than the others and surprisingly warm—the crackles in its surface faintly gold colored.

“So, I might have been an idiot,” he mentioned, holding the weight of Cas’s heart in his hand.

“I think you’re underestimating yourself a little with that ‘might’.”

“Would a present make up for it?” Dean asked.

Cas acted like he was considering it, but Dean saw the corner of his mouth quirk up.

“It depends on what it is.”

Dean took a step closer. “I’ll admit, it’s not the greatest gift in the world.” He cupped the side of Cas’s face, smoothing his thumb over the line of stubble. “In fact, it’s kinda something that was already yours to begin with.”

Cas raised an eyebrow. “Well? I’m waiting.”

Dean had been too. For four years. But, somehow, it was still worth it.

Because their second first kiss was even better than their last.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, everybody! And especially stitchingirl. Hope everyone is enjoying today and looking forward to a new year (finally!)
> 
> If you like this work, please consider checking out some of my others:  
> [Hindsight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745620)  
> [Truth Be Told](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621739/chapters/51558172)  
> Want to talk to someone about SPN?  
> I'm [@_GatesKeeper on Twitter](https://twitter.com/_GatesKeeper)  
> and [Gates_Keeper on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/gates-keeper)


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